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Deeplinks Blog posts about WIPO

Negotiations on the WIPO Development Agenda came to a grinding halt today, after the Chair presented the Committee with a proposed recommendation for the WIPO General Assembly that raised concerns about procedural fairness and transparency. Brazil and Argentina announced that they had instructions from their governments to withdraw from the process due to unfair procedural treatment, and requested that the existing proposals be sent to the WIPO General Assembly to decide the future of the Development Agenda. The only thing that was clear by day's end is that the annual General Assembly meeting on September 25-October 3 will be very interesting indeed.

Read on for more analysis and the NGO Coalition's notes after the jump.

For most of day 2 of this week's meeting on the WIPO Development Agenda, we counted. We heard statements from Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, and South Africa about the importance of protecting the public domain, balancing intellectual property rights with human rights, and the very real problems facing developing countries . In between, we listened to developed countries reel off lists of the numbers of the 111 proposals that they would -- and in the case of the U.S., Japan and Mexico -- would not support.

There was no real engagement or debate on matters of substance; the developed countries have clearly decided that the real action will be at the September WIPO General Assembly. Meanwhile, Brazil on behalf of the Group of Friends of Development, continued carefully documenting how their 21 proposal document (PCDA/2/2) addresses and summarizes the proposals on the table.

This week WIPO is holding the final round of talks on establishing a WIPO Development Agenda. The WIPO Development Agenda offers the possibility of creating global intellectual property laws that balance rightsholders' interests with the human rights of the world's citizens for access to medicine and knowledge. The scope of proposals on the table is truly amazing. WIPO is being asked to create ways to protect the Public Domain and to rebalance its technical assistance to developing countries. But so far, the talks have been marred by procedural stalling and little agreement on specifics. Now it's crunch time. In the next five short days, WIPO member states have to come up with concrete recommendations for the September WIPO General Assembly.

What does WIPO do when it's trying to secure agreement on an important treaty, but is facing fierce resistance? It organizes a meeting outside of home base in Geneva, with "experts" and businessmen to "educate" select countries on the need for the new treaty and try to shore up support. WIPO's latest meeting on the draft Broadcasting and Webcasting Treaty, announced just this morning, will take place on June 21 in Barcelona, Spain. It features a number of the experts who have spoken at previous WIPO events, including last year's controversial non-public regional consultation meetings organized in place of the regular copyright committee meeting that is open to all accredited organizations.

As we reported last Friday, the public interest won a big victory at WIPO's latest meeting on the Broadcasting Treaty. The contentious provisions creating unjustified rights for webcasters and simulcasters will be removed from the treaty. While this is good news, the battle isn't over yet. The remainder of the treaty draft covering "traditional" broadcasters and cablecasters still poses significant problems, and the webcasting and simulcasing proposals are still in play, as a separate draft treaty moving through a slower process. Drafts of the revised broadcasting/ cablecasting and new webcasting/ simulcasting treaties are due by August 1.